Obtaining business-level insight and control over the applications, users and devices in modern networks is becoming extremely challenging. On the applications front, modern networks have a huge mix in application types and deployment locations. For example, a single application might be implemented as a distributed and multi-tier application with the inter-component communication running over different parts of the network. Similarly, business applications may be hosted off-premise in the cloud (e.g., salesforce.com), on-premise in a local data center (e.g., SAP), or on-premise between hosts (e.g., unified communications). On the users and devices front, modern networks are accessed by a myriad of devices from wired desktops to wireless devices such as laptop computers, mobile phones, and tablet PCs.
Traditional network security and performance monitoring tools or policy enforcing firewalls require dedicated hardware deployed inline with user devices. However, dedicated hardware has drawbacks in supporting various types of applications and devices deployed in different parts of the network.